WO 2013/017278 A1 discloses such a method for producing a three-dimensional object from a solidifiable material, such as conventional plastics, which is liquefied in a manner similar to injection molding by way of a plastifying unit and then discharged drop by drop. The drops may be placed adjoining each other such that a connection or interfacial regions are established in which adjacent materials abut against each other. This has no effect on how the spatial structure of the individual materials is created. It is known from DE 10 2011 109 369 A1 to strengthen structures in the case of this method by embedding fiber elements.
A method which falls under rapid prototyping is known from WO 2009/013751 A2. There, under the term of “solid freeform fabrication”, paragraphs (0003) and (0004) list methods for production directly from computer data, which include for example three-dimensional printing, electron beam melting, stereolithography, selective laser sintering, laminated object manufacturing and FDM methods—that is to say, however, in which at best a small pressure is applied when discharging the material. In these methods, according to FIG. 8 in that document, it is possible to produce adjacent structures from different materials. However, the application is not performed by placing drop against adjoining drop or drop against strand but by applying solid materials and then post-treating or, with additional energy input, curing them (paragraph (0005)). This also results, on the one hand, in the case of different materials in uneven shrinkage of the object, so that the geometry applied does not correspond either in the interior or in respect of the external dimensions to the cured geometry. There are no configuration criteria for determining the respectively desired spatial structure, and indeed even in these conditions they would be difficult to observe.
EP 1 442 869 A1 discloses dividing into individual cells a data set of an object to be produced, and processing these structural elements differently from one cell to the next when the object is constructed.
In the production of plastics parts, high-quality parts of this kind can be satisfactorily produced in large batch sizes by injection molding or extrusion. The advantage of in particular injection molding lies specifically in the fact that high-precision production of complex part geometries is possible. However, if it is a matter of producing parts in relatively small numbers, that is to say for example singly or in small batch sizes, such as patterns with the demand for fast preparation and properties similar to those of injection-molded parts, other manufacturing methods are used, and these are widely known by the term prototyping and rapid manufacturing. Such parts are produced without tools, that is to say without molds, and in most cases on the basis of the generation of the geometry from 3D data. However, previous methods, such as melting powder coatings by the application of heat for example by means of laser, or printing methods with a different form of binding for the powder parts, do not allow the spatial structure to be individually produced or influenced.